Describing characters in words

I am familiar with the technique of Chinese 'spelling' but I would like to describe any character in words, where the spelling communication technique might fail.

I would love a lesson (or series like the pinyin series) on talking about characters. I would like to be able to describe any character I meet in words, particularly complicated or unusual characters (such as some family names!) heng, shu, na, pie, ti, dian, zhe etc, and how to put them together, heng gou, heng zhe, shu gou, shu zhe, etc. What order do I use in talking about how the character is written? Or has this already been done - is there a reference anyone can point me to?

And BTW is there a way of representing these parts of characters using the computer? My Windows input system does not seem to do the job.